American band The Killers carry out the Saturday headline slot at Glastonbury Festival in Somerset, Britain June 29, 2019. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls/File Photo Acquire Licensing Rights
Aug 16 (Reuters) – An American alternative-rock band, the Killers, has apologised for bringing a Russian drummer on stage throughout a present in Georgia and for describing followers as “brothers and sisters,” which prompted boos from the viewers.
Georgia has a protracted historical past of stress with its northern neighbour, exacerbated by Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and a subsequent huge inflow of Russian emigrants escaping their nation.
The band, seven occasions nominated for the music trade’s Grammy Awards, carried out on Tuesday in the Black Sea resort of Batumi throughout a European tour.
“Good people of Georgia, it was never our intention to offend anyone!” the band mentioned in an announcement on its Facebook web page, including that it had a longstanding custom of inviting folks to play the drums.
“We recognise that a comment, meant to suggest that all of the Killers’ audience and fans are ‘brothers and sisters,’ could be misconstrued,” it added.
The reference was to a comment band chief Brandon Flowers made to the crowd, saying he didn’t need the scenario to show “angry”.
“I see you as my brothers and my sisters,” Flowers added to the sound of boos and whistles in a video revealed by the Russian state RIA information company.
Videos on social media confirmed folks leaving the present, in addition to the booing.
Georgian public opinion is overwhelmingly pro-Ukrainian.
The band has offered thousands and thousands of albums, with many songs topping the charts because it shaped in the metropolis of Las Vegas in the early 2000s.
(This story has been refiled to appropriate the spelling of “Georgia” in paragraph 1)
Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Warsaw; Editing by Clarence Fernandez
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